by Tony Park
The rebels’ RPD machine-gunner opened up, firing low at first. By watching the puffs of dirt kicked up by his 7.62-millimetre rounds he was able to adjust his aim and walk his bullets up and into the truck. One man tumbled out of the back of the vehicle while it was still moving.
‘Fire the RPG!’ Gideon looked at the anti-armour crew and saw the gunner had the RPG-7 off his shoulder and was frantically pulling the missile out of the tube. ‘What happened?’
‘M … misfire, sir,’ the man stammered under pressure.
‘Hurry up. Reload! Keep firing, the rest of you. Aim for the truck – for the infantry.’
The Unimog had pulled over and the soldiers on board were leaping out. A medic had rushed to the fallen soldier, but the rest were very much alive and had shaken themselves out into an extended line and were running towards the rebel position, trying to get off the grassy killing ground as quickly as possible, and into the fringe of bush and trees.
Gideon raised his AK-47 to his shoulder and fired once. A Namibian soldier fell in the grass. He watched the BTR 60 turn to the left so that it was facing them. The turret rotated and the big 14.5-millimetre anti aircraft gun pointed towards them. The sound when it opened up was almost deafening. Leaves, bark and shredded twigs rained down on them as the gun fired high. ‘What’s happening with the RPG?’
‘Loaded.’
‘Well fire the fucking thing!’
‘Firing now.’
There was the pop of AK-47s and the chatter of the machine-guns but no whoosh and roar of a departing rocket-propelled grenade. Gideon looked at the team. The gunner and loader were tugging the second round out of the launcher. ‘Another misfire. Sorry, sir.’
‘Fall back, fall back,’ Gideon commanded them. Two out of two misfires was very bad odds indeed. ‘Reload while we’re moving. Go!’
Black smoke belched from the BTR 60’s exhaust and the armoured car started advancing up the rise towards them, firing on the move.
Gideon felt the punch of displaced air pass him by and when he looked to his left he saw one of the members of his squad had fallen. The heavy-calibre machine-gun rounds had taken almost all of his head off and blood fountained from the gory mess that remained. The young trooper Gideon had spoken with just before the shooting started stopped to look at what remained of his comrade. Gideon grabbed him by the straps of his chest webbing and yanked him away from the gruesome sight. ‘Get moving, I said!’
The boy staggered and Gideon had to hold tight to stop him falling. The trooper looked at his left hand and saw his index finger was missing. ‘Move!’ Gideon yelled at him. Gideon turned and emptied the magazine of his AK-47 at the pursuing troops. One-handed he tore open the waterproof packet of a field dressing with his teeth and passed the bulky cotton pad and bandage to the boy. ‘Tie that around the wound.’
‘R … reloaded, sir. Ready to k … kill this time,’ the RPG gunner called from behind him.
‘Keep going, the rest of you,’ Gideon ordered the team as he knelt beside the RPG man and changed magazines. ‘Steady,’ Gideon said, resting a hand on the man’s shoulder. ‘Aim well.’
The BTR 60 charged on towards them, flattening grass and saplings in its path. The heavy gun in the turret tracked the fleeing men and Gideon heard another scream of pain amidst the unceasing clatter.
‘Firing now,’ the man said.
Gideon fired two bursts from his AK-47 at the NDF infantrymen who were running to keep up with the armoured car they were supposed to be protecting.
There was no sound beside him. Nothing.
‘Run!’ Gideon stood and fired off the remainder of his magazine. He and the RPG gunner sprinted after the rest of the patrol, who were silhouetted against the crest of the hill. On the other side was the bridge and the rebel position, but for these few seconds they were all perfect targets. Heavy machine-gun fire swept the ridge and two more men fell.
One man was killed instantly when a bullet sliced through his heart, but the other had lost his right leg below the knee. He lay writhing and screaming in the dust. ‘Help me,’ Gideon said to the RPG man. Between them they dragged the wounded man upright and held him between them. The man bellowed in pain, however, as the RPG gunner fell. Gideon staggered and dropped to one knee. The RPG man was dead, having taken an AK-47 round in the back of the head. Bullets large and small hissed around him as he grabbed the one-legged soldier by his webbing straps and heaved him up and over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. Gideon bent and snatched up his own rifle from the grass and staggered over the brow of the hill. One of the others from the squad in front of him paused and turned. ‘Keep running … I’m fine,’ Gideon assured the man.
‘Covering fire!’ Hans lifted his AK-47 and started aiming at the Namibian troops who were coming over the hill. The enemy was trying to kill his men and Hans felt no remorse now when he saw another NDF soldier fall. Heavy machine-gun rounds started ploughing the dirt in front of his position. Hans lowered his rifle and pulled a pair of small Zeiss binoculars from the pocket of his shirt.
He scanned the crest and saw the turret of an armoured car. The commander of the vehicle had cleverly stopped just below the top of the hill and had his gunner train his gun down to its maximum angle of depression. The vehicle was all but impervious to direct anti-armour fire. In any case, it was out of range of his RPGs from here. He guessed the RPG crew he had sent with Gideon had missed the vehicle with every round.
Around him other men were pouring a noisy but largely ineffectual stream of lead at the Namibian troops, whose advance had lost momentum once they saw the fortified bridge. The enemy infantry had lain down in the grass on either side of the partially concealed BTR 60. ‘Mortars … two rounds, high explosive, at that armoured car; fire!’
Hans kept his binoculars trained on the armoured car. It was firing its main gun in short bursts now. He guessed the gunner and commander were conserving their ammunition. By his recollection the car only carried about five hundred rounds and they wouldn’t last long. A movement in the distant grass made him lower his field glasses. He saw another of his men, moving slowly, bent and burdened and lagging behind the other men. He focused again. ‘Gideon!’
Hans looked over his shoulder. ‘What’s going on back there? I said two rounds, high explosive!’
A bare-chested soldier who had been passing bombs to the mortar crew came running over to him and said, ‘There is a problem with the bombs. They are not going off, sir.’
‘Shit.’
He looked back at Gideon’s men who were retreating. The fastest runners were almost at the perimeter of the bridge position. ‘Get those men over here, now!’
Gideon was still staggering after them and Hans could see now it was another man he was carrying, on his back. He was about to send two men out to help his friend when he saw the first green glowing fireball of tracer land at Gideon’s feet. Another followed and he could hear shouting carrying down the hill from the Namibian position.
‘Sir …’ a sweat-drenched soldier panted as he stopped next to Kurtz. ‘You wanted to see us.’
‘What happened?’
‘The RPGs, sir … they would not work. They all misfired. The sergeant major, he told us to run, sir.’
He thought about the misfiring rocket-propelled grenades and the mortar rounds that had just failed to launch. They were all from the new batch of ammunition delivered courtesy of their new financial backers. ‘Steele.’
Kurtz, like every other man at the outpost, watched Gideon, who staggered through the grass along the verge of the wide tar of the B8 highway. He made use of the downhill slope and was keeping up a steady pace. His mouth was open wide, sucking in air as he ran.
‘Come on, come on!’ some of the men urged. Others whistled.
Pah-chunk, pah-chunk.
The BTR 60 fired two more ranging shots and they bracketed Gideon and his wounded charge perfectly; one landed just behind him and the other just in front.
‘Bastards,’ Kurtz said. They were takin
g their time.
‘Mortar … fire smoke!’ Kurtz yelled. ‘The rest of you … anyone with a smoke grenade, throw it now!’ He hoped that the smoke would at least obscure the gunner’s aim.
‘Misfire, sir!’ a man called from the pit where their sole mortar was dug in.
Edison arrived at Kurtz’s side. ‘The mortar rounds – they’re all duds. We have been betrayed.’
Hans nodded. Martin Steele had played a final doublecross. With no RPG anti-armour weapons and no functioning mortar bombs to deliver their own indirect fire, their available time at the bridge had just shrunk from days to hours.
Yellow and red smoke grenades popped and fizzed into colourful, billowing clouds beyond the perimeter, but Gideon was still further away than the strongest man could throw, so he was left exposed to the gunner’s mercy.
‘Come on!’ Hans yelled. ‘Nearly there!’ The effort of calling out to his friend seemed to rupture something else inside him and he doubled in pain, but shook off the offer of a helping hand from Edison. ‘I’m fine.’
The men around him were all cheering and yelling now and the firing had stopped from the NDF soldiers on the hill. The range was perhaps too far for them, but not so the gunner behind the heavy machine-gun on the armoured car.
Pah-chunk, pah-chunk, pah-chunk.
The explosions of dirt followed Gideon and were close enough to spatter against the man bleeding to death on his back. Kurtz allowed himself to hope. ‘Throw another smoke grenade!’
Kurtz signalled to a medic. ‘Get ready to treat that man as soon as he’s safe. Remember to put on two sets of rubber gloves, hey.’ The soldier nodded. Even in the heat of battle Kurtz had to remind his men to guard against the ever-present spectre of HIV-AIDS. There was no doubt that a significant proportion of the fighters, perhaps even the medic, were carrying the disease.
The smoke canister was thrown and it popped and sputtered into colourful life. Gideon was no more than a hundred metres from them now. The sergeant major dropped his rifle and he readjusted his grip on the wounded soldier and seemed to prepare himself for a final sprint. He lifted his muscled legs and the fall of his boots sounded like clapping as he found a surer footing on the tarmac highway. The men in the rebel camp were silent now. The fresh plume of orange smoke started to take form and rise around Gideon’s knees.
Edison put down his weapon and vaulted over the barricade of sandbags. He started running towards Gideon. Hans tried to protest, but the words were killed by the pain in his side.
Pah-chunk, pah-chunk, pah-chunk.
The grenade had done its job and Gideon and the man on his back were obscured. Edison disappeared into the billowing orange curtain. Not a man dared breathe, until the light breeze carried the smoke north towards Angola.
Edison reappeared first. He stood, oblivious to the bullets that continued to fall around him, and raised two clenched fists to the sky. He threw back his head and bellowed with the mix of rage, remorse and fear as the smoke cleared, revealing Gideon, and the man he carried, lying dead on the road.
THIRTY-TWO
A Caprivian agent living in Divundu, whose job was to deliver frozen meat and vegetables to the construction camp and garrison at the Okavango Dam, called Hans on his satellite phone to tell him the wall had been destroyed and the lands downriver were in flood. When the helicopter hadn’t returned to Kongola with his daughter and the American on board, Hans had feared the operation had failed and they were both dead.
The news raised a half-hearted cheer from the garrison, but the death of Gideon and the others, and the realisation that so much of their ammunition was dud, had sapped their morale. What little appetite the men had for fighting was further dulled by the rest of the news from Divundu – the army garrison there was on its way to Kongola to seek revenge for the breaching of the dam. When the observation post along the road radioed to confirm that a convoy of army trucks was approaching, Kurtz ordered his sentries to pack up and return to the bridge as quickly and quietly as they could, before they were ringed by NDF forces.
Edison had contained his grief and was moving up and down the line again, trying to reinvigorate the demoralised rebel soldiers.
Kurtz’s phone rang again. ‘Ja,’ he said, unable to hide the tiredness and pain.
‘It is Webster, Major, in Katima Mulilo.’
‘What news?’ Kurtz asked his agent in the provincial capital.
‘The people, Major. They are on the streets.’
Webster, unaffected by the deaths at Kongola, was ebullient in his description of people thronging the streets outside the government offices, and of convoys of cars blocking the B8, honking their horns in protest against the government and in celebration of the news about the dam. According to Webster the unofficial flag of Caprivi-Itenge – two black elephants with their trunks entwined, on a background of horizontal bands of black, white, green and blue – was flying in the streets and being waved from car windows. The police were in the streets, but so far neither side had resorted to violence.
As soon as he finished the phone call his signaller passed him the radio headphones and handset again. The OP was making a final report, as it withdrew, that the BTR 60 armoured car, which had disappeared from sight at the top of the hill after Gideon’s death, was being refuelled and rearmed, and that close on a hundred troops were debussing from the army trucks which had stopped on the far side of the hill.
The sun was high overhead and Hans Kurtz took a moment to sit in the shade of a water tower beside the customs post. His signaller had vanished, but returned a few minutes later with a lukewarm mug of coffee. ‘Dankie,’ Kurtz said. He took a sip, then, suddenly weary, rested his elbows on his knees and his head in his palms.
‘Daddy!’
He looked up. It was his son, running towards him, followed by Miriam, dressed in jeans and a green bush shirt. The boy threw himself into his arms, but Kurtz was able to mask the pain and smile for him. ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked his wife.
‘We came with the other women and children, in the boats and the mekoros.’
‘You were told to stay on the other side of the border and be ready to help with evacuation of the wounded.’
‘You look pale, are you hurt, Hans? Move, baby, let Mommy take a look at Daddy.’
Kurtz shook his head and held the boy closer. ‘No. You shouldn’t have come, Miriam. It’s not safe to bring the boy here.’
‘The boy will be a man one day and he deserves to be with his father in his own land, not across the border in a foreign country. Besides, haven’t you heard, Hans? It’s happening. It’s really happening – it was on the BBC this morning. People are rising up all along the Caprivi Strip. They’re coming out of their homes in Katima and Divundu, onto the streets and waving our flag. People have had enough.’
Hans looked up at the hill and at the stain on the road where Gideon and his comrade had fallen. ‘The NDF hasn’t had enough yet, Miriam. They’ll be coming for us soon. You shouldn’t have put our son at risk.’
She stared at him. ‘What do you want me to do?’
‘Go back to the river. Wait downstream. I will come if it gets too serious.’
She gave a snort. ‘You’ll never leave. I know you. But I will take our son into the bush for a little while longer. Come to me, my boy.’
His son looked up into his eyes and Hans ruffled his hair. ‘Go with your mom. I’ll be with you soon.’
The boy turned and slowly walked back to Miriam. What she saw made her raise her hand to her mouth, but it took little Frederick a couple of seconds before he noticed the stain and the wetness on his white T-shirt. ‘What is it?’ he wailed, patting his father’s blood with his fingers.
‘Come to me, now, my boy,’ Miriam said. ‘Hans … I’ll get help.’
‘The medics are busy with others. I’ll wait my turn, and …’ He raised a hand to stop his own words and hers. ‘Listen.’ They both heard the crump, crump, crump. ‘Mortars! Take cover! Run, Miriam, into
the bush. Hurry!’
The barrage was almost dead on target. The first two bombs fell just outside the perimeter, and the third landed right in the midst of the rebel stronghold. A man screamed and smoke and falling dirt were swept through the rebel camp on a hot wind. Miriam was crouched in the lee of the customs shack, but Hans took her by the hand and forced her to start running. ‘Downriver, as fast as you can. Go!’
‘Sir!’ a soldier called. ‘Look! Infantry on the move, and that armoured car is back.’
Hans could see the men swarming over the crest of the hill, the squat angular bulk of the BTR 60 cruising slowly along behind them. The armoured vehicle had a row of smoke launchers fitted to it and these fired, sending out canisters ahead of it, which provided an instant smokescreen to cover the advance. The 14.5-millimetre gun started firing.
‘Infantry in the open … eight hundred metres … Machine-guns, fire!’ Hans called. Their own limited arsenal of automatic weapons opened fire, at long range.
Explosions were going off around him now as the mortars found their mark, landing on either side of the Kongola Bridge. Hans called another squad of men from the east bank to reinforce the west, where the attack would hit. He had to trust his man in Katima that there had been no reports of a military force leaving the capital or M’pacha – yet. He imagined the Namibian government would keep a strong presence around the largest town in the Caprivi Strip for the time being.
The BTR 60 emerged from its smoke barrage and started firing at the rebel positions on the western side of the bridge. Men screamed and fell as the virtually unstoppable slugs tore through sandbags and flesh with impunity. The armoured car climbed out of the grass and onto the main road, where it settled into a sedately menacing pace, firing in long bursts as it advanced, but never getting too far ahead of its screen of infantry, who trotted along on either side of it, gaining courage and confidence from the vehicle’s presence.
An RPD machine-gun fired furiously at the BTR 60, but the 7.62-millimetre bullets bounced harmlessly off the vehicle’s sloping armoured front and sides.